


Buttercups and Sunshine

by MonsterTesk



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Childhood Memories, F/M, Murder, Poisoning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-18
Updated: 2015-04-18
Packaged: 2018-03-23 14:20:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3771436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MonsterTesk/pseuds/MonsterTesk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A poisonous plant is a poisonous plant even before it blooms. Chris and Kate have known this since before they could read. Mother made sure they did. She's the one who taught them; sometimes, death comes before the blossom.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Buttercups and Sunshine

**Author's Note:**

> It's fivethirty in the morning and I had a thought like. What if. WHAT IF. Gerard was the lesser evil between him and his wife? What if there was a reason absolutely NO ONE EVER mentions their mom? What if it's because her children committed matricide? Cue Ring Around The Rosie playing in the back of your head through all of this. 
> 
> I don't claim this isn't utter shit. I can't. It's like way late/early and I haven't slept butt fuck sleep. I'll sleep once I've finished murdering my mother. Yeah. Take that Freud.

_**Ranunculus aconitifolius**_ is part of the family Ranunculaceae meaning it, along with all its siblings, is poisonous. It's not known to cause death so much as blistering of the mouth, mucous membranes, and gastrointestinal tract along with bloody diarrhea and rashes in cattle unsuspecting enough to consume it in its raw state. In humans, it's largely a decorational plant and less commonly, used as a medicine for rheumatism and fever. The one they picked was not  _Ranunculus canus._ Its name may have sounded good but the Sacramento Valley cup was not the message they were trying for. Even if it did look the most like what both of them thought of when they imagined buttercups. They went with  _ **Ranunculus aconitifolius;**_ aconite-leaf buttercup. They both agreed it to be the most fitting. 

He never thought it a game. For a little while he thought maybe she had; that she'd forgotten about the fear and the running and the hiding in small, cramp places for hours, never knowing if it was over or not. He'd thought that she'd mis-remembered their promise two months ago, squeezed so close together in the shell of a rotting log, breath mixing together as they clutched tight to each other, ears strained for even the slightest change in wind. Mom was on a hunt and they were the three little wolf-pigs. He had been wrong. 

 

Wrong. So very, very, wrong. 

"She's gone!" Kate hissed, small fingernails digging sharp into the back of Chris' hand. He nodded, unable to look at the width of her cornflower blue eyes. The wind blew the sounds of sirens speeding through the mountains, bouncing the sound around like bolts in a tin can. Instead, Chris watched her child-square nails drag across the soft flesh of his hand, catch on a thin, white scar that stretched its way from thumb to index. "We did it, brother.  _We're free._ " 

Inside, a woman with hair as yellow as wheat and skin now red as the marks Kate's nails leave on Chris is already dead. The ambulance will do nothing but act as a taxi for her. She hadn't screamed. That's the part that gets him. They'd made it special, blended the flower with just the right amount of care, mixed in some vasodilators like  _ **Pimpinella** **anisum**_ , or aniseed, and  _ **Leonurus cardiaca** -_ motherwort- to ensure that when it took effect, she'd bleed quickly and die with the bitter taste of licorice and a childhood of fear on her tongue. The perfect pairing for the vomiting, rash, loss of control of bodily functions, and the slowing off her heart at such an agonizingly unrushed pace that it's possible the blisters in her mouth might have swelled up and choked her to death before the buttercup really had time to work if not for the soothing effect of such things as mint and rosemary to cloak the real star's of this smoothie. To Chris' disappointment, she hadn't screamed when it got the worst, before her throat closed up.

"You remember what to tell them?" Chris asked, turning to run fingers through Kate's long hair. In the mid-summer sun, it's poppy-yellow and a good pair for the rose blush creeping over her nose like jasmine vines. She nods, having ducked down and burrowed herself into his chest. 

"We just wanted to make her a treat. Like the mud pie from last week. And then she got this funny look on her face and she got sick and I was so scared. I don't know what happened. One minute she was saying it's yummy and the next she's getting sick. I'she gonna wake up?" Kate parrots and Chris hides his face in her hair, closing his eyes and pretending it's blades of grass, the multitudinous petals of dandelions, against his eyelids. 

"Yeah. That's good. Say that. Say just that. They ask anything more, you just cry like I know you can. Cry and ask for mom." 

"I know." 

The red of the ambulance now begins to peak through the trees like cardinals in the first snow, red-white-flit-flit-wailing-wailingwailingwailing. 

"She'll never hurt us again," Chris hissed, clutching with ungainly hands at his sister's tiny body. "She'll never hurt anyone. Ever again." 

Kate nodded and Chris kissed the top of her head. There's bile on his shoes and flower petals scraped under his nails. He can feel the rash beginning to start, the oils from several different plants irritating his skin the same way they turned mom's stomach, ate away at organ and flesh until her throat closed up and her eyes bulged. Just not before Chris watched sick come out her nose like milk does when Kate makes him laugh. This was different, though, better. 

 **Aconitum** is in the family Ranunculaceae and far more potent than what they chose. It would have been quick, easier... less painful. A promise is a promise, and they'd promised each other to make her know the pain and fear they felt whenever she was around; to know that Ranunculaceae work on other types of monsters, not just the wolves. 

 _ **R _ **anunculus aconitifolius**_**_ is part of the family _ **Ranunculaceae.**  _Ranunculus comes from combining the latin for frog with a diminutive ending. The meaning of their name is benign enough. In the right dosage and properly supplied, any plant in this family is poisonous. One just has to be familiar enough with it to know this. 

Mom taught them well. Far better than she ever should have if she had known it would end with her suffocating, lying in her own piss and shit and vomit, as her children sat on the front lawn, waiting for the sounds of sirens like morning glories wait for sunrise; expectant, ready, and just about to bloom. 

**Author's Note:**

> It is now six thirty in the morning. I am not an apothecary. I cannot claim any accuracy as far as the plants mentioned aside from the fact that buttercups and wolf's bane do, in fact, come from the same family.
> 
> ... I think. 
> 
> I'M GOING TO BED. DON'T JUDGE ME.


End file.
